CastleIsland

Associate Account Director

Series A Startup

About a month ago, I joined a pre-series A start up that has since announced close to $40M in funding. The product market fit is questionable at this point, since we only have about a dozen customers, but we are in an emerging space. I'm getting paid very well, which allowed me to justify the leap. Should I be concerned? Or does this FAT series A give us plenty of time to figure it out?

📠 Startup

20 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Series A is your metrics round. Tell me about the numbers of your business

How long have you been around?
How many customers have you signed?What’s your adoption rate?
Retention rate (renewals)?
Growth YoY?

PMF is important, but the numbers to prove your growth is more so.

Finally—why did you join the company, and do you have sales leadership who has “been there” in place?

RealPatrickBateman

Politicker

🔪Amateur Butcher🔪

Firing on all cylinders, must of had his quad-shot today.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Bravo. 👏

SADNESSLieutenant

Politicker

Officer of ♥️

so proud of my dad

CastleIsland

Tycoon

Associate Account Director

hahah thanks for the feedback @poweredbycaffeine

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

…I asked a ton of questions that will help you make your decision. Wanna answer or do you get the point?

CastleIsland

Tycoon

Associate Account Director

I also have worked with the guys that hired me before, so we are gonna do this thing to the best of our ability.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Then why are you asking the question?

If you don’t know the answers, that’s fine…but I gave you they keys to understanding the viability. Go ask.

bandabanda

Tycoon

Senior AE Mid Market

Legend

Goomba

Opinionated

Director

I hope it’s not a dipshit company that loves “strategy”

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

👀🍿

Goomba

Opinionated

Director

Imagine an organization that sells a solution that it doesn’t even remotely adhere to internally while trying to tell other orgs how to do shit. 70% of the company is engineering.

The COO talked about masturbation on LinkedIn and is a giga level douche.

The executive sales people in charge are literally tripping over themselves with writing novels for emails and don’t trust SDRs to write their own sequences.

Internally they requested that friends and family submit fake reviews on G2 and fake reviews for some Best Place to Work award.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Gurl I am INVESTED! This is better than my daily programs.

Goomba

Opinionated

Director

Had to explain the entire sales cycle to an AE that was hired in with 0 SDR experience and write them a cold call script because they had no grasp on the basic structure of a cold call.

Same company froze promotions for all BDRs while they mass hired these questionable grade AEs

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

I was never a SDR. I've always been a new biz hunter. However I'm a smart lil 🦊 and I love getting to know folks. I don't understand how some folks make it through life in general. 🤣

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

$40M in funding and only 12 customers? If you're paid very well then create backup plans but stick around until it doesn't make sense to.

Coffeesforclosers

Notable Contributor

Director Sales and Market Development

Series A funding goes quick, B and C are great but A is spent and B and C covers that, then its crunch time. However quickly they grab B funding will tell you. They are probably already looking for it, if they are you got a year

Updmamt

Opinionated

Business Development

Besides all metrics already mentioned, if you want to know if you need to be concerned, you need to look at:

- cash burn rate
- ARR or MRR

Those 2 together measures the efficiency of the company .

I assume that those 12 customers have generated a decent amount of revenue otherwise the evaluation won’t ever be that high.

MR.StretchISR

Politicker

ISR

Would you make any money?

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Curious what the update on this is?

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CastleIsland

Series A Startup

20 comments

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